Food inflation in Nigeria rose to 18.37 percent in April amid surging prices of staple foods across the country, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday.
The NBS in its inflation report said that the food inflation rate jumped from the 17.2 percent recorded in March, due to increases in the prices of bread and cereals, food products, potatoes, yams, wine, fish, meat, energy and oils. .
In monthly terms, the food sub-index increased to 2% in April 2022, 0.01 percentage point higher than the 1.99% registered in March 2022.
In addition, the average annual rate of change of the food sub-index for the twelve-month period ending April 2022 over the previous 12 months is 18.88%, 0.34 percentage points of the average annual rate of change registered in March 2022 (19.21 percent).
The report says “All Items Minus Farm Products” or core inflation, which excludes volatile farm product prices, stood at 14.18% in April 2022, up 1.44% from 12 .74% registered in April 2021.
On a month-on-month basis, the core sub-index increased to 1.22% in April 2022, down 0.24% from the 0.98% recorded in March 2022.
The NBS said that the largest increases were recorded in the prices of gas, liquid fuel, cleaning, repair and rental of clothing, clothing materials, other clothing and clothing accessories.
Status Analysis
In April 2022, the NBS said that year-over-year food inflation was highest in Kogi (22.79%), Kwara (21.56%) and Ebonyi (21.45%).
However, Sokoto (14.85%), Kaduna (15.55%) and Anambra (16.68%) saw the slowest rise in year-on-year food inflation.
In monthly terms, March 2022 food inflation was highest in Ekiti (4.03%), Taraba (3.68%) and Osun (3.04%), while Anambra (0.66%), Kogi (+1.01%) and Bauchi (+1.08%) recorded the smallest increase in month-on-month inflation.